Blood
by Queen Edmund Pevensie
Summary: There's a deep, dark evil pit inside of Sam, and he'll do anything to stop from falling into it. After Dean's soul gets dragged to Hell, Sam tries everything to get Dean out of Hell and to keep fighting. Post 3x16 up to the Pre-4x01. Sam/Ruby. demon blood.
1. Chapter 1

My head hurts for four months straight. Without relief or reprieve.

It starts the night we hunt Lilith and she sics her dogs on Dean. He dies with a smile on his face and it's cocky and reassuring, but his eyes go cold and stare unseeing at the ceiling. The world spins as Dean falls, and I don't notice when Bobby stumbles in because Dean's guts are in my hands and I can't hear a thing above the rush of blood in my head.

"Come on, Sam," Bobby says. He lays a hand on my shoulder but the pressure makes the room spin faster and he feels too close, like he's sucking all of my air out of the room, like he's stealing it from me, so I shake him off, and a little bit of the air returns to my lungs. "Let's get Dean out of here," he tries again, and the world, the room, my whole damn life comes to a shattering, shuddering halt. Each one of Bobby's words presses and pushes down against my brain and my head feels like it's going to cave in. Everything is too loud, too bright. Bobby hauls me to my feet and the room tips over, so he puts his arm around my waist and tries to manhandle me out of the house, and I can't feel or see anything now, except my head pounding like something inside it is trying to escape and Dean. But as we keep walking, Dean leaves my sight and a wild spike of panic shoots through my body because last I saw Dean, he was hurt, hurt badly. I whip around, out of Bobby's grasp and make my way back towards Dean. It feels like I'm walking through water that's holding me back, and I've been walking for hours, but Dean is still all the way across the kitchen, laying limp and still and not getting up.

"Sam?" It's Bobby. It must be Bobby because I'm watching Dean and Dean didn't open his mouth to say my name.

"_Dean_," I tell Bobby, I'm at scream at him. "We have to get him out of here!"

"I'll get him, Sam." Bobby looks like he might be crying, but I don't know why. Bobby can patch Dean up.

"He's hurt, Bobby, be careful," I tell him anyway, but it feels wrong. Something about it sounds wrong. Dean's eyes are open but he's not looking at me or telling me he's fine. Bobby doesn't say anything, hardly moves, except past me to scoop Dean up. Dean's eyes are still open and he doesn't try to push away from Bobby. He's not moving at all. He's not even breathing.

It hits me all over again and it levels me flat that Dean's not getting up, not going to be fine, and not only does it feel like a pound of bricks has landed on my head, but I can't breathe again.

"Go to the car, Sam," says Bobby, staring at me with Dean's head lolling against his chest, Dean's blood coating his shirt, slick and red.

"No." The room is spinning again and Dean is floating in and out of my line of sight. "No." When I find Dean I try to focus on him, but he's so far away from where I am. "Give him to me," I demand suddenly. All of the air in the room is concentrated, like a vacuum, right where Dean is. I need to be near Dean, I'll suffocate if I'm not, but Bobby doesn't seem to understand. He's just looking at me like I've grown an extra head. It feels like I have. "Bobby, give him to me. _Give me my brother_." I'm inside a vacuum now, a different vacuum, a truly empty vacuum. I'm the only thing inside it and my lips are moving but I can't hear the words coming out of my mouth, or feel anything around me, not the floor, not the blood on my hands.

"Sam…" Bobby says, and that I hear. I hear it like he's yelling into my ears. He's shaking his head and holding Dean close, and my head is pounding and pulsing so hard I think it might explode. I can't see or breathe and I can't understand how Dean's dead. It's been a year coming, but I'm knocked off my feet, because he's _dead. For real. _Dean is dead and I was supposed to save him. "Alright, fine," says Bobby at last. When he places Dean in my arms, they become the only thing in my whole body I can feel aside from my head. They're tingling with life and grief and they think that if they hold Dean long enough he'll come back to life. When he places Dean into my outstretched arms it's like the vacuum around me disappears and I'm sucked into the one around Dean, just the two of us. I'm able to breathe again, a full, deep breath, but the first thing I smell is Dean's blood, and Dean's blood is all over me and it makes my stomach twist and turn uncomfortably, but I make it to the car before I empty my empty stomach all over the side walk. All over Dean and all over myself.

I'm kneeling in my own sick with my dead brother in my arms, and all I can think about is how much my head hurts.


	2. Chapter 2

I wake up the next morning in the back of a car next to Dean's body. He feels sticky and cold and so do I, and after hoping for a half a second that I'm dead too, I look at Dean, his freckles hidden by blood, his smile gone, his eyes looking right at me, but not seeing a thing I'm doing. I want to clean him up, but Bobby's knocking on the window, so loud it's like his life depends on it, waving around a shovel in the early daylight of early May. It's the nicest, least apocalyptic day in a long time, and I realize that the weather is either mocking us or working for Lilith.

The door squeaks when it opens and I step out, squinting against the sun. "Bobby," I say. My voice sounds rough and empty, so much like that time at that mystery spot, and I can feel my insides swimming around in the nothingness that was full a few hours ago.

"I dug the grave," Bobby tells me. He's speaking softly and evenly like I might jump out of my skin if he talks too loud or too fast or too much of anything. I squeeze my eyes shut tight to remember when Bobby agreed to bury Dean instead of cremating him, but all I see is Dean's death and Lilith's smirk and I think it might be slowly driving me insane. "I thought you might wanna be there when we bury him."

I try to rub the throbbing pain out from behind my eyes, but all I do is manage to make it worse. I nod, but the movement sends pulse of sharp pain into my skull, so I shake my head, like that would make it any better. Maybe I am losing my mind. I think Bobby thinks so too when the next thing out of my mouth is, "I wanted to." Bobby looks at me for a while, and I yank the shovel roughly out of his hands. Then Bobby realizes that I wanted to dig the grave, but he doesn't seem to care, because taking the shovel from him throws me off balance, and I almost collapse back into the car.

"It's where you wanted it," he tells me, but I don't remember where that is. "Grab Dean and let's get going," he says, taking the shovel back from me, gently.

* * *

Dean's grave is in the middle of a clearing in a forest, and even though I don't remember, I must have chosen it because it's right in the middle of nowhere. So far in the middle of nowhere, it's seven miles from the nearest gas station on foot. It's isolated enough that when I bring Dean back, no one will notice that a dead man is walking around. And if I can't, it's secluded enough that no one will even bother looking for my body.

Bobby offers to help me lower the coffin, _Dean's coffin_, into the grave, but I haven't let him anywhere near Dean's body since last night, so I place Dean in the grave by myself, climbing into the hole in the ground that will not be Dean's final resting place. I consider breaking open Dean's coffin and laying down next to him, but Bobby's watching every move I make, and Dean isn't just _dead_ because of me, he's in _Hell, _so I climb back out, apologizing for everything I said about Dad, ignoring the spots that appear in front of my eyes, and stand next to Bobby as he covers my brother with dirt.


	3. Chapter 3

I end up at some seedy motel with some slimy girl who's half drunk out of her mind and she's running her hands up and down my chest, over my shirt, under my shirt, but I don't notice because it's the first time in three days that my brain doesn't feel like it's trying to break out of my skull, because I'm blind drunk and can't feel a thing except for a hole where Dean used to be. It's the same emptiness I felt a few days ago, like my organs were drowning in it, and tonight is the first time I've tried to fill it, but now, they're just floating in cheap booze and even cheaper sex, and the whole thing is just going to leave me hung-over and empty tomorrow. I should tell this girl to get lost, but it seems I've lost my voice, and eventually, even she doesn't think I'm worth it and she leaves me alone to think about Dean's Hell and how I couldn't save him from going and I can't seem to save him now either. If Dean was here and I was in Hell, he would move heaven and earth to get me out, but all I can do is sit in the dirtiest motel room in the continental U.S.A. and think about what a piss-poor job I'm doing. At everything.

I decide when I wake up tomorrow that I'm going to start to look for a way to get Dean out of Hell.

* * *

When I do wake up, I have the worst headache of my life. I can barely stand, and when I do I puke all down my front and leave a stain on the floor, but I groan and straighten up and move towards my backpack. I dig a bottle of painkillers, the really good kind that knock you out, and I think about downing the whole thing, but I take two and swallow them dry.

The car, Dean's car, is waiting outside and when I finally open the door, I find myself on the passenger side, waiting for Dean to get in and drive us away, but he's not coming. It takes a couple of seconds for me to realize he's not coming, and when I do, I start to cry. I'm squeezed into a car that's waiting under a hot sun, sobbing, because right now, I can't figure out how to get Dean out of Hell or how to keep fighting like he told me to.

I fish out the half empty bottle of whiskey and drink half of it in one mouthful. It doesn't burn as much going down as it did last night and my head doesn't feel like it's going to pop off. Suddenly, I'm angry, angrier than I've been in a long time, and I can only think of one way to get Dean out of Hell. I don't know if I'm more or less angry at Dean for selling his soul for me now.

* * *

This is the first time I try making a deal with a demon, and I still have most of my wits about me, so I tell her I want Dean or I will single-handedly hunt down and kill every last demon.

"Promise?" she taunts. She kisses me and says, "You better keep your end of the deal, Sammy, because I'm not brining Dean back," with her lips still against mine. She disappears, smokes out of her body before I can get her, but the girl she was possessing crumples in front of me. She's got big brown eyes that are riddled with fear and confusion, and either that demon told her who I was or she thinks I'm the one who kidnapped her, but it doesn't matter either way.

Not for her.

I lose my head for a split second. Maybe I'm angry that that demon got away, or that this worthless girl get to live while Dean is in Hell, but I take her in my arms and I cut her throat, and the scariest part is that it feels good. It feels good when her blood, warm and thick, runs down my arms, seeping through my fingers, to watch the light leave her eyes. It feels good to take something that I have no right to take, sort of as some sick compensation for what I don't get. It feels good to give in, just for a second, to that deep, dark pit of evil that's been sitting in my stomach for the past twenty years


	4. Chapter 4

It takes a week and a half for me to lose my grip completely. I must visit every crossroads in the Midwest in ten days, trying to make a deal with any and every demon, killing them when they won't, but I'm falling, falling fast into a deep, dark pit of nothingness where it doesn't matter who lives or who dies, as long as Dean wasn't in Hell.

A week and a half after I first killed that girl, there's a bottle under my bed instead of a gun, and Ruby's knife in my hand when I sleep, but most of the time I don't. I can't tell you where I am when I snap completely and decide that I'm better off in Hell and I can't stop it anymore. I'm angry and so wasted that I can hardly see, but I make it to the nearest crossroads, and there's demon there, sneering at me like I'm the punch line to his favorite joke, and maybe I am, but I know that there's one fool proof way to get Dean out of Hell, and that's for me to go in his place.

The demon tells me that I'm worthless to him, and that Dean's where he should be, that Lilith has him right where she wants him. I persuade myself that he must be lying, but he's not, and I know it before I threaten to kill him, stabbing Ruby's knife through his hand.

Something bubbles up inside of me, and I kill the demon and the person he's inside of anyway, but I don't feel any better. I could collapse there in the dirt and never get up, ever again, and I know I would be better off that way, anyway. Dean said that I would go dark-side eventually, and I can feel the evil inside of me starting to take over, and I know that if I don't do something about it soon, I'm going to tip right over the edge.

Maybe this is Lilith's plan, to get Dean in Hell, and slowly send me into madness so I can lead her stupid demon army. All that crap about her wanting my intestines on a stick was just a front to get me riled up.

Well, she's not going to win, I think, as I as stumble into the second grossest motel on the planet. She's not going to get Dean's soul and me to destroy the world. I'm probably going to Hell anyway; maybe we'll be together, me and Dean. And it seems like the best option.

* * *

Ruby shows up in my motel and something like relief flutters inside me when she says she's going to kill me, but she stabs the demon instead, and all hope flushes out of my system the same way it did when I saw the light leave Dean's eyes, and I hate her for it. Ruby looks at me, wiping the blood off on her jeans and tells me to get away from here as fast as I can.

She says she can help me, that everything she's done is for me, but she can't help me, not really, and she can't help Dean. So all she did was save a life that's not good for anything, or destined to be good for anything more than destruction, and I hate her for it.

I send her away, but I know in my heat, and whatever I have instead of a soul, that she'll be back. She always comes back. I don't know what I'll do when she does, but if she can't give me what I want, it's lights out for Ruby.

I'm cleaning my gun when she knocks on my door and tells me that her new body is socially conscious, it's just her in there.

Ruby marches right back into my life with all her snark and wit and the first thing she says is that she can't save Dean. Her eyes glance over and categorize what I have spread out over the one table I found that stands up, and she acts like she knows what I'm going through.

"I can get you something else you want," she says, and she looks so sad and so serious and so much like my last hope not to let Dean down that I let myself believe her.

But I can't help feeling like she's making fun of me, because there's nothing in the whole damn world I want but Dean. "What's that?" I sneer, hoping, praying she'll give me something to fight for, and knowing she's going to come up empty.

"Lilith," she says, and it's a promise. Ruby promises that even though she can't bring Dean back, she'll be able to give me the next best thing, the thing that Dad was never able to get: revenge. So I hang on a little bit longer.


	5. Chapter 5

Ruby teaches me how to pull demons out of a body and send them back to Hell, but it's hard.

"There's a connection," she tells me, twirling a knife in her hand absently when I'm finally sober enough to concentrate on her lesson. "Between you and the demon. _All _demons, even Lilith." I blink and my insides squirm, because the last thing I need right now is a demon telling me that I'm just like the things that are torturing my brother as we speak. "It's what Azazel did to you," she explains. "Psychic powers are only the tip of the ice-burg." She smirks. "You are capable of so much more."

The way she says that makes me feel dirty, like I'm her secret weapon against Hell, and that's all I am. Ruby's weapon of destruction. "No," I tell her flatly. My head is throbbing dully and it occurs to me, vaguely and out of the blue, that in the two weeks since Dean has died, I've become almost alcoholic. "Whatever you're thinking, if it can't help me kill Lilith, then _no_."

"Okay," Ruby promises. "Just the basics then."

The next few days, Ruby teaches me how these powers work, how I can use what Azazel did to me for good, for being a hero, how if I focus on doing good for the meat-suits of the demons', then I'll be able to keep fighting. Ruby teaches me to focus on the evil inside of me and how it feels coursing through my veins, and how, if I focus hard enough, I can feel it in hers too. The first time I do, it spooks me so bad I won't go near Ruby for a week.

The next thing she teaches me is to pull a demon, to exorcise it with my mind, and she tells me to try it on her first. I feel her moving inside that big empty body, squirming, but only like one of her feet fell asleep. It takes more out of me than it does out of her and she's there to catch me before I even open my eyes.

I end up crumpled on the floor in her arms , and I want her to stop touching me because I feel crowded by her arms and legs and hair, but I don't have the energy to say so, and when I do I look up to see her smiling widely at me.

"Did you know this would happen?" I demand, pushing away from her so hard she flies backwards, but Ruby won't stop smiling at me.

"Sure," she says. Ruby dusts herself off and gives me a hand up. I take it reluctantly, and Ruby watches me carefully as I walk unsteadily across the house. "But you did so much better than I thought you would."

I was in the middle of taking a drink when she says those words, and I slam the bottle down so hard some of it sloshes out of the top and onto the table. I hate Ruby for forcing me down this path, for saving my life, for make me humiliate myself and telling me _I'm better than she expected. _

"It's okay, Sam," she assures me. "It's really good. It means you're _strong._"

If I was so strong then why is my head pounding harder than any of those visions left it? Why can I feel my blood pounding through my body like I just ran a marathon? Why can't I see or stand straight? _Why do I feel so weak?_

"How do I get stronger?" I ask. It's meant to be a demand, but I'm afraid that it comes out more pleading than angry.

"Practice," she answers. The answer to any question. The answer of every coach in the world, of that music teacher I had for three months when I decided I wanted to play clarinet in eighth grade, of Dad. _You'll get there, Sam. You just need practice_. Ruby walks over to where I'm standing, wavering on the spot, and pushes me into a chair. She stands there, shifting awkwardly on her feet, before she turns to me and says, "And something else." Ruby doesn't smile when she says that.

"What is it?" I'll do anything to kill Lilith, anything at all.

"You're not going to like," she tells me blandly, but suddenly Ruby is smiling again, and she pulls a small knife out of her boot. My protests that I don't have to like it die on my lips when Ruby draws the knife across her arms and a thick, dark red band of blood appears on her forearm. "We can do this one of two ways," she says, and I think she might be making so sick blood play joke, but I can't figure out what it is. Ruby pulls a glass vile from her jacket pocket, and she slowly fills it with her blood, drop by drop by drop. Ruby hands it to me with an understanding smile, and I take it without thinking, but once Ruby's blood is in my hand, I don't know what she expects me to do with it. "Drink it," she explains. I close my eyes and lift the vile to my lips, but I hesitate at the last second and think about, just for a second, what I'm doing, what I'm becoming in drinking Ruby's blood. How there's not going back. "Sam," she says gently and suddenly, Ruby is right up against me, fingers around mine. "It's the only way," Ruby says. I nod and Ruby helps me tip back the vile and drink the whole thing without throwing up.


	6. Chapter 6

I hate the demon blood that pumps through me, because it's a part of me and that means a part of me is evil. I hate it because it's the only way I'm going to get stronger, and I hate it because a part of me wants it.

Slowly but surely, Ruby gives me more and more of her blood to the point of inconvenience to herself, but she says she doesn't mind, that it's a part of this war we have to fight, and I wonder, if things were different, would Ruby have followed me as Azazel's demon king. By the time I'm ready to exorcise my first demon, I think the answer must be yes.

Ruby hunts down a demon and drags him back to this rotting house, where I'm "charging my batteries," like Ruby told me to. He laughs at me as I try to pull him, but I don't notice because my head hurts in places I didn't know existed, and my nose is bleeding.

Ruby is my knight in shining armor, so she stabs the smartass and tells me that it's going to get better. I know before she says anything else that she's not talking about demons.

I hate Ruby and her blood that might as well be my blood too, but I hate her even more when she talks about Dean. She doesn't know what it's like to live alone in the world, to feel like it's crashing down around your ears, but she tells me that she used to be human, that she remembers what it feels like to be human, and all the time she's saying this, Ruby is moving close to me.

She brushes a strand of hair out of my face, but I catch her wrist before she can think about making another move. I should have known this was coming eventually, but I'm hit with the cold hard reality of the fact that I don't want to let go of Ruby's arm, and she doesn't want me to let go.

I want what Ruby's offering but I can't because it might just break me. I'm already dishonoring Dean by being anywhere near Ruby. I can't let him down in this way too, and even if this wasn't about Dean, about how he left a hole so big nothing can fill it, how Dean's the only reason I'm still alive and kicking, and how he's what I'm sacrificing my humanity for, I couldn't do it anyway. Ruby's forcing me into an evil I can't comprehend, but it's deep inside of me, a part of who I am. The list of things I'm doing to let Dean down grows longer and longer each day, and if I go down this road with Ruby, where Ruby seems to be patiently leading me by the hand, that's just another reason for Dean to burn in Hell and be disappointed in me.

"You're not alone," she says, she begs me to understand, and then she kisses me and I kiss her back. It's rough and messy and desperate, and I push away before I've had enough of her, because I _can't_. I want her, I want _anyone_ right now, but she's convenient. Anyone who will touch me like I'm human and they love me. Ruby touches me like I'm worth bleeding out for, and like I'm a _hero. _It almost makes it worth it that she's a demon. But I pull away anyway, because she still is a demon.

"Sam, it's okay!" she screams, and she sounds like she's been alone for almost as long as I have. But it's not. It's not okay, it's anything but okay, because there's demon on my tongue and demon inside of me, and I can't decide if Ruby tastes evil or not, but at least I can wash the evil out of my mouth. "What's wrong?" she asks desperately.

"Where do I start?" I scream back at her. I'm sitting down but I feel like I'm standing up, and I'm still trying to scrub my tongue clean of her. My next step is to rip it out.

Ruby softens and she comes over to me, pressing our foreheads together. She's talking to me but I can't hear the words, just the rise and fall of her voice and the thumping of her blood in her veins. Her breath is hot on my face, but it's not hot like hellfire, just hot like human breath, and it smells like french-fries of all things.

Ruby takes my hands and places them firmly on her hips, under her shirt so I can feel that she feels soft and warm and _human, _and mostly like she wants to love me almost as much as I wish I had never met her.

I can't get away from Ruby, and part of me doesn't want to. Part of me wants to stay here with Ruby touching me, and me touching her because it's been a long time, a year at least, since I've let anyone touch me the way Ruby is touching me now.


	7. Chapter 7

It's a disgusting, desperate mess, but it works for us. All the while, I'm getting stronger, my headaches getting duller, and I'm getting better at ignoring the hole that Dean left inside of me. Maybe, I think for a second, Ruby's blood is making it better, but the thought makes me sick, so I don't think of it again.

Or I try not to, but every time I exorcise a demon, every time I hulk out, I fill a little more of that hole where Dean used to be. Ruby says that it's a part of being purposeful, but we both know that the demon blood is a part of me and when I drink it, it makes me feel whole, like this is what I was meant to be, like I'm in control, even just a little bit.

* * *

One morning Ruby wakes up or gets up or whatever and tells me that Lilith is nearby, she's sure of it. It's the first time Ruby has mentioned Lilith in nearly a month, and she seems almost as determined as I am, but she can't be nearly as angry. Just the mention of her name sends a hot wave of anger rushing through me that's blinding and disorienting. I can't see straight and my head swims with fury, and honestly, I'm not sure how I string two coherent sentences together at all to tell Ruby that I'm ready.

"What?" She's surprised and incredulous. "Right now? You're ready _right now_?"

"Yeah," I lie. I'm lying through my teeth, and Ruby knows it because she's my teacher. She knows better than I do that I'm not ready.

"You're not ready yet," she insists. She's calling my bluff, and she looks a little like she wishes she never told me about Lilith.

"It's now or never," I say, pulling on my jacket. The floor feels a little unsteady beneath my feet, but I feel like it doesn't matter that the ground might fall out from under me, because I've just recently learned out to fly.

"We've got to wait until you get it right," demands Ruby, reminding me that I can't even exorcise one lousy, low-grade demon, let alone _Lilith._ She's the most powerful demon in Hell, Ruby tells me. "You haven't exactly been too successful."

I'm smiling though, because there's no chance in hell that I'm strong enough to take Lilith out, but no chance in hell that I'm letting her live, either. This is the end for her, and I'll be smiling when I cut out her throat. I grab the knife out of the bag, but Ruby stops me, wrapping a hand around my wrist.

"You have to take her out," she reminds me like her life depends on it. Or maybe because her life depends on it.

"Don't worry," I tell her, still smiling. "I'll take her out." I don't know if I've ever been so happy for something so grim. But taking a demon's life, I remind myself, killing demons, isn't grim. It's a crusade. It's a cause for celebration.

Ruby thinks I'm being reckless, but I don't care what she thinks. I could shake her hand off and go whether she thinks it's a good idea or not, but her hand is soft and I'm distracted by it enough to let the smile melt off my face and let Ruby explain.

"You're the only one who can do it, Sam," she says. Ruby's been feeding me that line for a month, and it sounds like a prayer. Ruby says that I'm the only person on the whole planet who can kill Lilith, and she says it so often, I'm starting to believe her. She's telling me that her knife won't kill Lilith because I'll never get close enough to use it, but Ruby doesn't know that for sure. The ways she's looking at me, with her hand still wrapped loosely around my wrist, I think she must be scared, must be worried, and I think of how much simpler life was when the only person in the world who worried about me wasn't a demon. "So if she kills you first…" she says. Ruby's implying that if I die before Lilith, then her last hope is gone, that the world is going to burn.

It's not the plan, but it's a good enough plan B.

Ruby must see something shift in my eyes, because the next thing she says stops me cold, freezes the fire in my belly. It's scary how fast the truth can make you pause.

"You don't want to survive this," she says softly. I can't move, can't see or hear. But I tell her that she's wrong anyway. "You _want_ to die." All I can hear is my blood rushing in my ears as I try to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to get out of here now without Ruby tailing my every move.

I tell her that's stupid and pull away from Ruby and her concern, but she's smart and she's right, and she's got me cornered. She explains it, running after me as I make my way towards the door. Tells me how if I survive this fight I have to go on living without Dean, with nothing to fight for ahead of me. Her voice has that edge to it that I gets when she's desperate, desperate for me to listen, for me not to give up, for me to concentrate or try again, and right now, all the facets of Ruby's desperation are bleeding into her voice, and I'm glad I don't have a tell like that.

I hate Ruby and I hate her most of all when she tells me she knows what Dean would want. Ruby tells me that I can't kill myself because it's not what Dean would have wanted, but Ruby doesn't know or care about what Dean would have wanted. There's a red film in front of my eyes, but Ruby's begging me just to think about it so I don't touch her. I could snap her puny little neck and she would be done with.

I guess I forget that she's a demon, and even if she let me, it wouldn't have killed her. Ruby is a demon and she's trying to keep me from killing Lilith so I don't kill myself, pushing me away from the door. The contact sends me over the edge and I shove her against the wall, holding her there with her special little knife. I hope I draw blood.

Ruby doesn't say a thing, and we both know she lost.


	8. Chapter 8

There's a twelve-year-old girl, dolled up in a frilly dress, sitting at the dining room table, and a couple of demons telling me it's a trap. One of the demons is pinning my arms against the two sides of a doorway and the other is cutting off my air supply. I see the knife but it's across the room, and I'm placing bets against myself that that knife will be the last thing I see. It's a stupid way to go, half-cocked and suicidal, especially when the thing I'm planning to die fighting doesn't have the guts to show up and face me. I'm going to die here, I realize when black spots start swimming in front of my eyes. I'm going to die, and if I die here now, then I'll have been the biggest fuck-up of a brother there ever was. I'm going against every last one of Dean's wishes, and I'm doing it for him, but dying here, right now, like this, would mean that everything I've done that would have made Dean angry, made him hate me, all of it will mean nothing.

But I don't die now because the demon holding me down lets go and looks down to see the tip of a knife sticking out of his stomach, and when he falls, he reveals Ruby, standing there panting a little, just the way we were introduced a little over a year ago, but this time she's not blonde.

Ruby's half watching me stand there trying to orient myself, half fighting the other demon, and all I can think is that Ruby came back for me, even though I was going to kill her. Ruby came back for me and is getting the crap kicked out of her. She's risking everything, putting everything on the line for _me, _and I can't really understand why. She's going to get sent back to Hell to endure the eternal wrath of Lilith, and that will be two people in Hell because of me, but all Ruby can say is, "Get the girl! Go!"

I'm not sure how it happens, but I'm outside the house with the girl. She's crying and the whole thing is making my head spin. We're watching Ruby through the window and she's not winning. The demon has her by the neck and she's kicking, trying to get some traction against the wall, but her legs are just flailing futilely. In the span of a minute and a half our roles are reversed and this time, I have to decide if Ruby's worth it to me.

"Stay here," I tell the girl, but she doesn't look like she's going anywhere.

I would run into the house if I had the strength, but I don't, and I guess it's better this way. The demon doesn't notice me come in, and neither does Ruby. I'm standing in the hallway, concentrating as hard as I can on the demon in the room that isn't Ruby. My adrenaline is pumping and I think it's the only thing that gets me through it, trying to pull a demon out of someone I can't touch. I close my eyes and focus in on it, trying to pull it out with my mind. I feel it let go of Ruby and I open my eyes to watch, but I don't stop pulling.

Ruby's watching me expectantly, eyes shining and proud, and I think _this_ is something I can do. There's a cloud of black smoke pouring out of the demon's mouth, soaking into the hardwood floors. The body crumples and the demon envelops it, and for a split second I think it's going to try to get back in the body, but it seeps into the floor and when I can't feel it moving anymore, I assume it's in Hell where it belongs.

The world is spinning and tilting like some amusement park ride that really stopped working three summers ago, but the park can't replace it because they're too sentimental, or out of money, or all around scumbags. I feel like I'm going to collapse right here on the ground in the middle of this house, but Ruby is staring at me like I just moved a mountain for her, and she's so happy and proud, but a little worried about me at the same time, so I hold my ground.

"I'm okay," I gasp as I try to settle my nerves and my stomach and the world around me, but Ruby doesn't look convinced. Ruby doesn't look convinced but I don't care because she looks so proud, and she came back to save me from killing myself, and _I made her proud_. "Thank you," I tell her.

* * *

The little girl's name is Kaylie and she's sitting in the back of Dean's car, wrapped in a blanket. Ruby found Kaylie a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and she seems more comfortable than she was in that dress. Kaylie is asleep and she doesn't need to wake up because she lives three states away. Even if Dean had been driving, we wouldn't have made it until morning.

"Let me drive," Ruby says. I'm falling asleep at the wheel and I need to sleep, but I want to get Kaylie home and Ruby isn't allowed to drive Dean's car. "Sam," Ruby says gently and puts her hand on my shoulder. "We're not going to get her home tonight. Let's just stop."

"_No."_

"Sam, you're going to get her killed," she said harshly, and I slam on the brakes. We're on some back road so there's no traffic, but Kaylie jolts awake anyway, staring at us with wide eyes.

"Sorry," I tell her. I'm sitting motionless in the dark in the middle of an empty highway with a little girl and a demon, and the demon is persuading me to move over so she can drive to the nearest, cleanest motel so we can get Kaylie some food and a bed, and so that I can sleep too.

I can barely keep my eyes open, but I don't think I'm going to sleep.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asks me and she asks Kaylie, after we switch places, even though I don't remember doing that. Kaylie nods. "Good," Ruby says, and you wouldn't know for a second that she's a demon. Ruby starts the car again, her hand on Dean's keys, on his wheel, driving his car, before she turns to me and asks again, "How about you?" she asks. "How are you feeling?" I shrug, but my head is spinning more than it was before, and I feel empty and shaky. My eyes are getting heavier, but my mind is racing so fast that I can't even understand what I'm thinking, but I sure as hell can't tune it out.

"Sam?" says Ruby again. I look over to see that she's staring at me, smiling a little. "Pulling that demon took a lot out of you," she says, but Ruby is all smiles. "You did good, Sam," she promises. "Get some sleep."

Something about the way Ruby is looking at me soothes away the discomfort in my head. Her voice breaks when she says my name, and it's so familiar that I sigh and my mind slows down enough to appreciate the peace and quiet.

I lean my head against the window, closing my eyes and imagining, for just a second, that Dean is driving and the whole things was just some sort of nightmare.


	9. Chapter 9

Ruby wakes me up in the morning when the sun is shining warmly through the windows. Kaylie is sitting up staring at a house with anticipation. I groan and sit up. My head feels too light, like there's nothing left in it. We must be parked outside of Kaylie's house because she's inching closer to the door, her hands against the window, pressing her fingerprints against it, smudging them onto the glass, which would piss Dean off mightily.

"We should check the place out before we let her back in," Ruby explains, suddenly, making me jump. I turn to look at her. She's not looking at me, but staring in the same direction as Kaylie, canvassing the house from inside the car. "We don't want her to be captured by demons again."

"Oh." It makes a lot of sense. Ruby has made a lot more sense in the past twelve hours than she ever has before, and she seems to be right about a lot of things too. My head feels so empty it's like there's too much room in there for thought to form together, anyway.

Ruby gets out of the car before me and walks over to my side, even though the driver's side is on the side of the house. "Stay here," she tells Kaylie and motions for me to follow her out of the car.

When I stand, I almost collapse again because my legs feel like jelly and I look down to be sure that the ground is firmly planted under my feet, and even though I see it, I'm a little surprised that it is. My ears are ringing and my head is buzzing hollowly, but Ruby takes me by the hand and leads me behind a tree, where she pulls a silver flask out of my backpack. She hands it to me, but I don't know what she's expecting me to do with it; the buzzing in my head is too loud and it's ricocheting off the sides of my skull, inhibiting all and any thought. For a moment, I can't even remember Dean with his insides on his outside. It's just me and Ruby, and this silver flask between us on the corner of Hell and Suburbia, and for the first time in a month, I feel okay. Tired out and sore, but not like there's a black hole in my chest that's eating me from the inside out.

"You should drink it," Ruby suggests. "If there are demons in there you're no good to me like this." She means shaky and weak, not the first time I've felt whole since Dean died, maybe even before that. I swallow it down and it's the first time the taste of Ruby's blood doesn't shock me. Ruby is smiling when she pulls the flask away from me, and I'm shaking a little less already. I can hear my own thoughts and the buzzing is gone. Ruby is smiling and I feel healthy and strong and like the gaping hole that Dean left is mostly filled in, and I think I can drink more, but Ruby is putting the flask back into my bag.

She hands me her knife and I wonder why. "I don't need it anymore," I remind her. Ruby laughs and stands on her toes to kiss the blood off the inside of my lips, and I kiss her back, even though I don't know what it's for.

I'm attracted to Ruby like we're magnets and she's pulling me in faster and faster and stronger and stronger, and I can't pull away, even if I wanted to. She's keeping me grounded, my center of gravity. I can hear Ruby's blood pumping through her veins, and I'm sure that if Ruby disappears, then I'll disappear right along with her. Her blood and her lips are pulling me in and it's the first sense of stability I've had in months, years maybe, so I don't care.

"Let's go," Ruby says to the inside of my mouth; her tongue to my cheeks and lips, and when she pulls away, I don't know whether it's a good thing or not that I don't feel sick to my stomach.

* * *

After we drop Kaylie off, Ruby drives for a few hours, and I don't think to argue. I'm feeling like myself again, and it's good to be in this car with nothing but the open road in front of us. I manage to fall asleep for a little while and when I wake up, I hear nothing but the hum of the engine, the road under our tires, and the music playing softly. I'm awake and I know that it's Ruby, not Dean, sitting next to me, but I don't open my eyes because if I keep them closed for just a little longer, I can pretend that it is.

"Rise and shine, Sammy," Ruby says suddenly. She has a habit of that, it seems. "I was thinking about getting dinner," she explains when I finally peel my eyes open to look at her. "Think you're up to it?"

"Definitely," I say. The hollow feeling in my head has moved to my stomach, and it feels good to feel hungry, to want to eat something and for it not to feel like a chore. To feel like my stomach can handle it, and I can keep any food down at all. As soon as I realize that I'm hungry, I feel hungrier than I've felt in a long time.

Ruby pulls into the parking lot of the next roadside diner she sees, and the gravel crunches beneath our tires. We walk in together, and no one stops to look at us like I'm a monster and Ruby's a demon. We seem like a regular pair to the wanderers, lost on the back roads of North America. We belong together, rambling on across the country, fighting demons. Ruby orders french-fries and I order the first substantial thing I've eaten in months, and I feel alright.

Ruby's not Dean, not even close, but she's trying to fill in and she cares about me, and for right now, that's enough.


	10. Chapter 10

Hiccups wake me the next morning. Terrible, shaking hiccups that push themselves out of my body. My head still feels fine, but now my stomach feels like it's trying to force everything in it out of it. I barely make it to the bathroom before last night's dinner makes its reappearance. There's more blood in my stomach that's floating around in the toilet with it than I would have expected. Watching it sink, dark red in a hypnotizing swirl, shocks me into full consciousness of what I'm doing, doing for Dean, doing to myself. Yesterday, I relished the taste as it pumped warmly through my body, but even the thought of it now makes me queasy.

It's bad enough to have evil inside of you, but it's a million times worse to voluntarily put more of it in your body so you can feel it coursing through your veins like the fires that are burning your brother in eternal damnation.

Dean wouldn't want this. I'll find another way to get Lilith. Ruby will understand.

* * *

Just because Ruby understands doesn't mean she's all gung-ho for our new course of action. "Are you sure, Sam?" Ruby asks for about the millionth time that hour. "I mean, I get it, okay?" she says. Ruby is sitting on a table watching me pace up and down the motel room. "But you're doing so well."

That's the worst part, I think, because I don't want to stop drinking demon blood because I know that I'm getting better, and I'm fighting, and I've found something empowering about this thing –this exorcising demons with your mind thing. Using Azazel's gift to work against him and his plan, to give Hell the biggest kick in the pants conceivable, and using their own blood and plan against them to kill Lilith.

I stop pacing and look Ruby dead in the eye. There's evil in her that doesn't show and that evil is in me too, and it doesn't matter what irony I find in it or what _reasons_ I'm doing this for, the idea makes me sick.

"It's not the psychic thing I have a problem with," I tell her. Ruby sighs like she expected that. "I want to keep using the powers, Ruby," I say. "Isn't there another way?" I plead.

"Sam," she sighs. Ruby leans back on her hands and closes her eyes like she's thinking hard about something. "I'll do you a deal." She smirks at last, her eyes flicking open. It might be a trick of the light, but I swear Ruby's eyes turn black for a half a second. She pushes herself off of the table. "Just when you need it," she suggests. "You decide, you call the shots," Ruby asserts.

I feel okay with this plan. There's no other way, after all. Not any other choice.

Not for me at least.

* * *

It's been almost two months since Dean has died, and I can exorcise demons without my nose bleeding if I'm fully charged –that is: well-rested and chock-full of Ruby's blood. I'm taking blood from the demons we capture and practice on and from the demons we exorcise. The looks the people give me after the demon is gone don't bother me after a while.

It takes me almost two months for me to realize what I'm doing is good. Sometimes the demons ride the people extra hard for kicks and they're dead before we get to them, sometimes pulling the demon is too much for the body, but most of the time, the person lives, and I feel like it's the first time I can really get behind this job. Dean always said saving people before hunting things, but we followed Death around the country, and sometimes it seems we do more harm than good.

Ruby and I are good, though. If Dean was here, he would be proud of the work I'm doing.

I whisper it into my pillow and it keeps me going for tomorrow, keeps a nagging, hollow sense of hopelessness away.

Dean would be proud to be my brother.


	11. Chapter 11

I keep time by how long ago Dean died, and two months after, I drink demon blood like it's a vitamin, and sending demons back to Hell hardly winds me at all.

"We can do more," Ruby insists feverishly sometimes, when she gets caught up in the moment and my progress. She watches the demons squeezed into the bowels of Hell like it's a work of art, and she looks at me like I'm _her _work of art.

"Like what?" I'm eager to learn, eager for Ruby to teach me how to work against Hell.

"Torture," Ruby says. "You're almost ready," she promises. "A couple of weeks." Ruby presses a kiss to my lips, but I don't kiss her back and just sort of sit there, feeling the way the soft skin of her lips brush and push against mine, the way they pulse slightly. I want to bite them, bite them open, but something stops me.

I think it's the sudden flashing image of Dean, torn up on a random kitchen floor.

"No," I say. Ruby pulls back, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. "No torture."

Ruby softens. She's been to Hell, she knows more about torture than I do. It's the first time I've thought of what was really happening to Dean down there, and the world _torture _is making horrific images of Dean getting carved up flicker behind my eyes, and I don't think I could do that, even to a demon, even to the things that could be ripping Dean's arms and legs and fingers and toes off as soon as I send them back to Hell. "It's just a step, Sam," Ruby promises. "You'll have to kill Lilith." Ruby's sitting next to me, smoothing out the wrinkles in my shirt and I don't squirm as much as I would have a month ago.

"No torture." Two words, three syllables, resolute and firm, so Ruby backs down.

"Think about it," she whispers in my ear. Her breath is hot and it tickles my neck.

I do think about it, but I won't budge. Instead, Ruby whispers in my ear and says I'll be great, that I'll save the world. She tells me that torturing demons won't hurt the person, just the demon inside. Ruby lets me lap up her blood and she watches me grow stronger. The headache I've had for two months fades, and Ruby continues to teach, while she tries to wear me down. I give in after a month.

In the meantime, though, Ruby teaches me other things. All those demons we've hunted have tricks. Flinging, throwing, locking our limbs so we can't fight back. Ruby says she can teach me all of them. "Even the appearing and disappearing out of thin air thing?" I ask.

Ruby stops like she's surprised and a grin splits over her face. "I've never thought about it," she admits. "I don't know why not." I smile too. "Whatever a demon can do…" Ruby muses.

That feeling that bubbles up in my gut whenever I think too hard about how just like a demon I am, or becoming, or whatever, only I can't be exorcised, washes over me, but I push it down, and I make it the reason this has to be done. Like a demon, but _good, _Ruby says like it's her Holy Gospel and I am her God. If I'm like a demon, then I have to save people.

It's second on my list of reasons to do this behind Dean.


	12. Chapter 12

The middle of July I hit a wall that I feel coming a million miles away, but it's coming a million miles an hour, so it hits me before I can really process what's happening.

Dean died two and a half months ago, and Ruby showed up two months ago. I've been getting stronger every day, been working my way up the ranks of demons. Ruby says I'll be ready soon, and I've never been so excited.

This wall feels like failure because it _is _failure, no matter what Ruby says.

"Let's just take a break," she suggests. "It's the middle of July. Vacation season." Her smile is warm and she doesn't seem worried. I am though, because before I hit this wall, if a demon was strong enough, I would still get migraines that would last for days, and I'm worried that I've hit my peak, or that I'm not strong enough to exorcise even the weakest of demons anymore. "The world's not going to end if we take a few days off," Ruby reminds me.

She's right, and the rational part of me knows that she's right, but I try to imagine taking some time off, going to the beach, the mountains, the Grand Canyon, anywhere, but it seems wrong for so many reasons, not least of all because Dean had been gunning for a vacation, but he never got one. And honestly, stopping now scares me and it feels like failing, even worse, it feels like falling. I can't take a break and I can't stop because if I stop now, I'll die, and I've just sort of gotten used to the idea of living again. "No, I have to keep fighting," I tell her. Ruby doesn't know that that's what Dean told me before the hellhound came and ripped him apart, but she doesn't push it anymore.

"Okay," she agrees. "I'm just thinking about what's best for you." That's what she does, it seems. We stop when I want to stop; we go when I want to go. Ruby makes sure that I'm sure that I'm always in control, even if I never feel like I am.

"What if I can't get any better?" I ask her. "What if I'm stuck?"

"You're _not, _Sam," Ruby promises. Ruby sounds sincere and worried, but not, apparently, that I'm never going to be able to exorcise another demon. More concerned about what this wall is going to do to me. I look down, but Ruby comes over and lifts my head gently so I'm looking into her eyes. They're not black or red, just brown, and they're looking at me like they believe in me. She wipes the blood off of me chin and turns us around so I can't see the body of the third person I couldn't save. "Hey," she says softly. "It's going to be okay. We'll work through this."

Work we do, and at first, it's difficult. It's worse than when I started, but maybe that's because I feel like I should be able to do this already, because I _have, _in the past. Ruby is always watching. She watches me struggle and collapse, and she doesn't try to catch me anymore.

"Your problem is," Ruby informs me. "That you're thinking too hard."

I make a face. "What do you want me to do?" I ask. "_Not think?_" I spit. The thing about exorcising demons with your mind is that you're exorcising demons with your _mind_, and that takes a little bit of brain power.

"Listen," Ruby snaps, standing up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. I think she's going to tell me off, but all she says is, "Just relax."

I take a deep breath. The oxygen fills my lungs and all I can hear are three hearts pumping in time. The demon in front of me laughs, and snorts something about my girlfriend always coming to my rescue. I close my eyes. "Can you do it, Sammy boy?" she laughs viciously.

There's a sharp pain in my head and the customary gagging noise that accompanies a demon being choked out of a body. Ruby's probably right, I am over-thinking it. The demon dissolves into the floorboards and I don't think too hard about the metaphors and ironies of the situation. I just focus on how it feels to pull a demon out of an innocent person, how satisfying it is to send their demonic ass back to Hell.

I'm panting a little when I open my eyes, but Ruby is looking at me, and the girl the demon was possessing is unconscious. Ruby kisses me because she's elated and proud, and I break the devils' trap so Ruby can put her in the car, and we drive her to the nearest hospital.

* * *

The girl is okay, and it's just me and Ruby at a diner together. I'm eating and Ruby is watching me. "Did you clear your mind?" she asks with a smirk.

"Yeah," I say. "You were right." I push the chipped plate away from me, and even though I only ate half of what I ordered, it's more than I've eaten in one sitting in a couple of months. Ruby turns the plate towards her and finishes my fries. "Sorry," I apologize.

"No worries," she says. "You think you're over your 'wall?'" Ruby does the air-quotes and everything.

"I don't know," I admit. "I guess."

"Don't think so hard about it," Ruby says. "It's not a crossword puzzle, or a riddle, or whatever it is that you like to do." She's teasing me, and her smile is almost identical to the one Dean would give me when he gave me the same advice. _Don't think so hard, Sammy... Don't geek out over this, just enjoy it... It's okay if you don't think so hard, College Boy. _ "Trust me," Ruby declares emphatically. She throws a french-fry in my face, and it's the first time I realize I really, really do.

We continue like this for the next few weeks, getting me over this wall, and it's harder than we expect, but Ruby encourages me to face this like every other challenge I've faced in my life: headfirst and with a give-'em-hell attitude.

"Maybe we should increase your dosage," Ruby suggests. I assume that Ruby's making yet another joke about my intake of demon blood, but it makes me uncomfortable, so I shoot her a dirty look, and Ruby laughs in response.

We do "increase my dosage" in the end, and it helps with the headaches afterwards, but it doesn't make pulling the demons any easier.

It takes the rest of the month, but eventually, it's as easy as it was at the beginning of the month, so at the end of July, I decide that I'm ready to move on to bigger and better things, but Ruby gives me a sad look and tells me I'm not ready.

"I'm proud of you for trying though," she tells me, stroking the hair out of my eyes. "I'm proud of you for wanting this."

I don't really, not the way people normally want things. I stopped _wanting_ things three months ago, but I need Lilith dead, and this is foolproof. As soon as I'm strong enough, I'm going to hunt her down, and mount her head on my wall, and that's the closest I've come to wanting anything since Dean made his deal.


	13. Chapter 13

August passes in kind of a blur. I'm officially over whatever mental block I was experiencing on August 3rd. Ruby announces it triumphantly, like it's a holiday, and she says we can move on. I'm itching to learn, and Ruby is itching to teach me.

August 4th we're back to hunting demons and tracking Lilith. Ruby makes me promise that I won't go after her until we have a definite plan of attack put together, and I almost go as far as to pinky promise. So much has changed since that first lead, and sure, killing Lilith is my drive, my passion, the reason I get up in the morning, but it's not the end after Lilith. There's always going to be something else to kill.

Ruby and I drive around the country in Dean's car, with Dean's music, eating at Dean's favorite diners, and even Dean's necklace thumping against my chest, keeping time with Dean's music after I find it stuffed in one of the zipper compartments of my backpack. We drive around hunting demons on Dean's crusade, on a crusade _for _Dean, which turn out to be very different things, until the middle of September, and all omens point us to Illinois.

I've been back to Illinois since Dean died, but the demons are centering in and around Pontiac, right near where Dean was planted, and I'm so close to his grave I just sort of lose it. Ruby drives us to from Texas to Illinois, and as she drives into Pontiac, I realize I can't breathe.

Maybe a minute, maybe an hour later, Ruby realizes it too, and she pulls the car over, and takes my head in her hands, and forces me to look at her. I squirm out of her grasp and try to get my breathing under control. I suppose being so close to where Dean is buried forced me to realize, all over again, how real this is, how _dead_ Dean is, how I've been living without Dean for four and a half whole months. I guess part of me thought that if I killed Lilith, then Dean would magically come back from the dead, but it would be so easy to go visit Dean's grave right now, and that makes it all seem real, all over again.

"Sam," whispers Ruby. "_Sam? _Sammy? Is this about Dean?" It's a stupid question and Ruby knows that it's a stupid question, but she asks it anyway. "Come on, Sam, take it easy," she soothes, pressing and folding me into her arms. It's cramped and uncomfortable, but Ruby smells good and strong so I relax a little. "Let's just find a room," she suggests.

So we do.

Ruby checks in under the name Kristie Myers, and we don't hunt any of the demons while we're in Illinois. I'd rather spend my time trying–after over four months–to get Dean out of Hell, but Ruby stops me whenever she sees me pouring over any books. I tell her that they're for something different, but Ruby knows I'm a liar, and she won't stand for it.

We don't hunt demons in Illinois because we're so close to Dean's body and I can't bring myself to drink Ruby's blood. The whole thing seems kind of pointless right now, anyway, and I can't wait until we get the hell out of Pontiac, or I sack up and do whatever I have to do for Dean.

In the meantime, Ruby suggests we just relax, take a breather, and even though the idea is still repulsive to me, it seems that there's nothing else to do. I don't know why we can't just leave, but Ruby refuses, and I get to thinking she might just want me to start hunting again. The week we spend in Pontiac, Illinois drags on, and on the third day we're there I think I might be getting sick.

I have a headache that increase with the hour and a fever that starts early in the morning and rises all day long. One time, Ruby asks if I feel like powering up, but I glare at her and tell her I feel like crap, so she backs off.

She all but tucks me into bed at night for the rest of that week. Ruby kisses me on my forehead and my closed, burning eyes and my neck, and tells me that when I feel better, we'll get out of Illinois. We're not ready for Lilith anyway.

I feel hot and cold and grumpy. My limbs feel like they weigh a ton each, and my joints ache to move them at all. I'm miserable and useless and I just want to get the hell out of this hotel, out of this town.

I go to bed on the night of September 17th with the fresh, pounding headache and fever upwards of 101, and really, there's not much I want to do then but die.


	14. Chapter 14

I wake up four separate times that night. The first time I wake, I do so to find Ruby watching over me, her black eyes glinting in the city lights shining in from below.

"Ruby, are you okay?" I ask weakly, pushing myself up on my elbows. There are no lights on in the room, but I see Ruby's head snap down to look at me, her eyes flicking back to Coma Girl Brown.

"Go back to sleep, Sam," she says dismissively, fixing her eyes on the door, a crease folding itself between her eyebrows.

I lay back down, but I still feel awful, and Ruby watching the door the way she is, makes me uncomfortable. "What are you doing?" I ask, still lying down.

"Watching you sleep," she snaps. Ruby sighs and looks at me. "I got some demon tingles," she explains. I make a face to try to figure out what she's talking about, but Ruby huffs a laugh and says, "It's okay, Sam, really. Go to sleep."

I close my eyes and groan. "Yeah, okay," I say.

* * *

Ruby is still watching me the next time I wake up, but something's changed in her eyes, so it doesn't look like she's witnessing a major shift in the natural or supernatural world. Only like she's watching me. Suddenly, I feel like I'm going to throw up, so I stumble out of bed, and Ruby's arms are thrown under mind. She leads me, supporting me, all the way to the bathroom.

I'm heaving and panting, folded up with Ruby in this tiny hotel bathroom, my knees pressed against the cold tile of the floor and the toilet, and I'm squeezed in so tight, I can feel the cold through my jeans. "Take it easy, Sam," Ruby coos. "You're okay. Just take it easy."

I want to tell her to shut the hell up, it's easy for her to say when she's not the one busy puking her guts up all over the floor, but I don't have the time or the breath.

When I've finished barfing, my head feels like it's on fire, so I lay it down on the toilet seat. The porcelain is still cool even though I've been breathing and leaning on it for the better part of an hour and, even though it reeks, it feels good.

Ruby sits there with me for fifteen minutes before she picks me up off the bathroom floor, and brings me back to bed. "I'll be right here if you need anything," she promises.

* * *

I feel something cool on my forehead and against the back of my neck, so I force my eyes open again to see nothing but Ruby's hair. It's swinging back and forth, tickling my nose. It smells like hotel shampoo and her blood, and the scent is so familiar that I let my eyes slide closed again without ever bothering to find out what Ruby is doing.

I guess she notices that I'm awake though, because when I'm on the brink of fevered sleep, I hear her whisper, "That's it, Sammy. Go back to sleep. Just trying to keep your fever down."

I let Ruby's voice and hands and scent and the faint pumping of her heart lull me back into sleep, and this time I sleep for the better part of the night.

* * *

It's four-thirty in the morning the next time I wake up, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong, nothing in the whole room that should have woken me. Ruby is sitting at the table with her arms folded across her chest, but she looks completely relaxed in the dull green light coming from the clock on the microwave. I close my eyes to try to go back to sleep, but now that I'm awake I can't ignore the pounding in my head, or the loud ringing in my ears.

I drift in and out of sleep for the next hour, and when there's finally enough light to justify getting up, I do.

Ruby's not impressed and ignores my pleas to get out of here, go for a walk or something, because Pontiac, Illinois is make me stir-crazy, and I can't spend another second in this room. She just sighs irritably and says she doesn't care if I feel like I can run a marathon, I still spent almost two hours puking up most of my internal organs last night, and I'm in no shape to be out and about.

"Can we at least get out of town?" I ask. "I'm never coming back to Illinois as long as I live."

"_No," _Ruby insists with more heat than she has with anything else all week. "We can't leave."

I'd like to get in the car and drive as fast and as far away as possible, but there's an edge to Ruby's voice that I don't like, so I sink back down, deflated, and let Ruby call the shots today. She has a point after all; when you spend half the night sick you shouldn't be doing anything too strenuous the next day.

Sighing again, Ruby moves over to where I'm shrinking into my bed, and she swipes a strand of sweaty hair out of my eyes. "Tomorrow, okay, Sam, I promise."

Ruby looks at the door as if she's waiting for something to happen, for someone to kick down the door for no other reason except to announce his arrival.

She probably knows that I've been waiting for that same thing to happen for four months.


	15. Chapter 15

I spend the rest of the day resting under Ruby's orders and watchful eye, but really what I do is pace frantically around the room until Ruby finally agrees to letting me take a walk outside unsupervised. She caves around two-thirty in the afternoon, and I slam the door behind me viciously.

As soon as I'm outside, I take a deep breath. The air feels different, cleaner, freer, fresher than it has all week, all summer maybe, and I chalk it up to fall rolling in, but I know in my heart that it's something else.

The walk I take at two-thirty in the afternoon that day is the first time I feel truly peaceful since Dean died. There's probably a hundred demons in town all working for Lilith, all willing to disobey her orders if they get to kill me themselves, and I just don't care. It's not the reckless kind of not caring either. I just feel, for really no reason at all, like there's something really worth fighting for here, like all the pieces of me that got ripped up right alongside Dean four months ago are finally getting glued back together. It's not the demon blood, or the hunting. I just feel good.

When I've been walking for about an hour, I think about Dean, and I think about visiting his grave, but a wave of grief washes over me, so I don't go, even though I really want to. I miss Dean a lot, and I want to be close to him, and this fighting for vengeance thing isn't really cutting it, but I guess I don't feel as good as I thought.

I go back to the room at four-thirty in the afternoon without visiting Dean.

On the way back to hotel, I make up mind, and I tell Ruby the moment I open the door. "I'm going to visit Dean tomorrow," I announce.

"Why didn't you go while you were out?" Ruby asks. I look down and I think Ruby gets it, maybe even a little better than I do because she says, "Do you want me to come with you?"

I shake my head. "No," I say. "No offense, Ruby, but Dean's doesn't exactly like you."

"Why would I be offended?" she asks, feigning something like surprise, and I know Ruby will hang back when I go talk to Dean. "We'll swing by on our way out of town. I'll wait in the car and everything."

"Wait, Ruby," I say suddenly. "I was wondering if we could stay for a few more days."

Ruby gives me a look like she's trying to figure out whether I'm playing some sort of angle, but in the end, she just smiles victoriously. "Are you ready to hunt?"

"Yeah."

Ruby's smile grows. "Let's order a pizza."

* * *

There's a knock at the door at five-thirty and I hear Ruby giving the poor guy lip, so I go over to help, because sometimes I forget, but Ruby's still a demon.

I turn the corner out of the bedroom to save some poor teenager from Ruby's wrath, and stop dead in my tracks and mid-sentence because there are two faces and no pizza and a sudden rush of blood in my ears, so loud and so fast, I'm pretty sure I'm going to faint.

One of the faces is Bobby's, and he looks how I left him, sad and concerned and the last person on earth I wanted to see. I sneak a glance at Ruby and see a smirk playing on her lips before I force myself to look at the other face staring at me. He's got wide, hopeful, green eyes, and he's looking me over with such graceless familiarity that it can't be anyone but him.

But I can't believe it.

Everything just stops. Ruby and Bobby and the TV in the back of the room disappear. There's nothing, not even the hotel, but me and him as we look each other over like it's the last thing we're ever going to do. I wish he would break the silence because I can't believe it's him, and if_ I_ do it, then the world will shatter, but I'm holding my breath, and honestly, I don't know how long I'm going to last like this.

"Heya, Sammy," Dean says at last, and I guess it didn't matter who made the first move, because my world is finally, completely, crashing down around me.

I stand there for a few more seconds, trying to process what's just happened, how Dean is alive, how he's here, but as Dean moves forward, I realize that it can't be him at long last after four agonizing months of waiting for just this, and that this is the worst, cruelest joke anyone has ever played on me, and this is coming from a guy who's wholelife is a terrible, cruel joke.

I tackle him and push him up against the wall, pulling a knife on him, trying to make the thing wearing my brother's face bleed, and he seems surprised to know that I don't understand. I'm going to kill it, rip it apart, probably drink its blood for good measure because I'm so angry, but Bobby grabs me, tells me it's him, it's _really_ him, and I want to believe it so badly, I relax, drop my guard, and all but fall to pieces on the ground.

Dean's here, he's _really_ here, making jokes and laughing, and I fall into his arms, squeeze him so tight, so close, I don't think I'll ever let him go, and Dean does just the same to me.

Dean hugs me and tells me the one thing I've needed to hear for four months without saying a thing, and I try to tell him back, but mostly, I just feel like crying. I don't want to let go of Dean, and I'm pretty sure Dean doesn't want to let go of me. Everything that's happened these past four months just dissolves in his touch, and suddenly, everything makes a lot more sense, because the thing I'm fighting for is right here in front of me.

**End**

* * *

**A/N: Thank you all so much for reading and for your continued support throughout this. I might do a sequel in a few months, faster if there's interest in one, that would take place during season four, so just let me know.  
**

**Anyway, thank you, and have a great rest of the summer **


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